The relationship between training and firm-level employment adjustment given an unanticipated fall in product demand has been central to human capital theory. The most cataclysmic negative output shock occurred in 1929-30. At this time, easily the most important source of United Kingdom general...

In Europe in recent times, bargaining between a leading nationally-based industrial union and a representative group of employers over the issues of employment, wages and working time has proved to be influential in a much wider industrial context. Adopting a generalized Nash bargaining...

This paper investigates the relative cyclical behaviour of the pay of piece workers and hourly paid workers. It uses a unique data set of blue-collar workers in British engineering between 1926 and 1966. The statistics are obtained from the payrolls of firms belonging to the Engineering...

We investigate wage-hours contracts within a four-period rent sharing model that incorporates asymmetric information. Distinctions aremade among (a) an investment period, (b) a period in which the partiesmay separate (quits or layoffs) or continue rent accumulation and sharing, (c) a post...

This paper offers a contract-based theory to explain the determination of standard hours, overtime hours and overtime premium pay. We expand on the wage contract literature that emphasises the role of firm-specific human capital and that explores problems of contract efficiency in the face of...

Under the Government's New Deal proposals to help create jobs for the young unemployed, employers are offered margtnal employment subsidies. Such interventions involve relative changes in the firm's fixed and variable labour costs. In turn, cost changes have implications for both employment and...